Doors Floors and More

Cited: Forbes

Continued from “Some Brands Never Die Part 1“

Parkhurst actually believes that, without any more setbacks, Toyota just might bounce back over the next couple of years as the backlash is already beginning to die down. Toyota sales as even jumped 17% in the 1st half of the year with the cloud of the safety recalls hanging over its head.

Company troubles don’t always doom strong brands. Consider Marlboro. Cigarette brands have been on the ropes for years as government restrictions have made it increasingly difficult for tobacco companies to market their products. The settlement signed in 1998 between the four largest tobacco companies and 46 state Attorneys General severely limited tobacco marketing and called for the companies to shell out $206 billion over 25 years to the states to pay for health-care costs.

No tobacco brand has thrived like Marlboro since the settlement. The brand ranks No. 8 on our list, worth $29.1 billion. Marlboro’s market share in the U.S. was 33.8% at the time of the settlement; today it’s 42.8%, which is greater than the next 12 cigarette brands combined. Marlboro’s message has been taken out of mainstream media. The brand, owned by and , is now marketed directly to consumers and in places where they gather, with help from a database of the names of 25 million smokers.

Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, has been called everything from evil to a vampire squid, but when it comes to investment banks, Goldman Sachs the brand still reigns supreme. It has been the lead bank in global mergers and acquisitions for eight of the past 10 years. Even with an SEC suit hanging over its head (the company has since settled, agreeing to pay $550 million), Goldman was once again the top M&A bank in the first half of 2010. It had an advisory role on $224 billion worth of deals, which represents 20% of global deal activity, according to Dealogic. The brand is worth $9.4 billion, and comes in at No. 45 on our list.

The United Way is the only nonprofit that makes our list, coming in at No. 26 with a brand value of $14.3 billion. The United Way was founded in 1887 and is made up of 1,800 local United Way chapters in 45 countries and territories. The economic downturn affected the charity as it did most other nonprofits, and donations fell 9% between 2006 and 2008. Yet with $4 billion in annual donations, the United Way is twice the size of the next biggest charity, the Salvation Army.

United Way of America CEO Brian Gallagher has transformed the century-old charity since he took over in 2002. At that time 50% of local United Ways defined fundraising as their primary objective, with the rest focused on community impact. Today 90% of United Ways are focused on community impact. In 2008 Gallagher announced a new plan to refocus the organization on three core issues: education, income and health, with specific metrics for measuring success in each area.

According to James Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand a global brand consulting firm, US companies are going to put more value in their brand names because they will affect the balance sheets more. Brands play a more prominent role on balance sheets outside the US than they do within the US or they may be lumped as part of a goodwill package when companies are bought and sold. Gregory says that the increasing calls for a standardized global accounting system may present an opportunity for the role brands have on the balance sheet to be seen.

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My Take: I agree, some brand names will never die. Take a look at Singer, that brand has been around for 70 years. The brands that do die are the ones that were taken down by personal injury lawyers. When a personal injury Attorney Denver CO gets a case against one of these brand names, they go all out. It also depends on the type of case that they’re working on.

If it is a brand name like Toyota, then a Texas car accident law firm would be handling the case. As recent events have shown, Toyota is probably in negotiations with a lot of injury attorneys. When a TX personal injury attorney gets a hold of a case, they are like bulldog! It’s even more so when a tractor trailer accident attorney handles an accident involving a semi truck and another smaller vehicle. Many times when a vehicle’s manufacturer is at fault, people will also get a wrongful death lawyer to handle the case.

There are injury attorneys all over the country and they used to be called ambulance chasers. Only the ones that are lacking in a good reputation are called that anymore. There are Los Angeles injury attorneys, Chicago injury attorneys, Florida injury attorneys and the list goes on. And that is why these brand name companies have a tendency to quake in their boots when a lawyer contact them about one of their products.

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